Robin Mckelle

What happens when you stand back and let a song speak to you? When you truly stay open and approach the music with no limitations. When you listen to the echoes of the singer/songwriters who’ve moved you, changed you. Dolly Parton, Sade, Amy Winehouse, Adele, Janis Joplin, Carol King, Billie Holiday, Joni Mitchell, Lana Del Ray. For Robin McKelle, that’s when your own voice creates something totally new.

The songs on her new album "Alterations" are diverse in tone and mood. The desperation of Del Ray’s Born to Die. The exuberance of Parton’s Jolene. McKelle transitions seamlessly between the emotions of every song. And makes each one her own. In the making of the album, most of McKelle’s final vocals were takes she sang live with the band. “The energy and connection with the musicians was so powerful. They lifted me up and made it feel effortless. I’ve never felt so confident in the studio.” McKelle wrote one original tune for the album, Head High.  It’s her tribute to the female singers and writers who came before her. “It’s about the power that the female singer has. To move people with her lyric and song. To be fearless. To touch people’s emotions. To make change.”

To McKelle, alteration is all. Because when you create change, you create space for something to shift in the world and in yourself. As an artist. And as a human. And that is a change for the good.